I've loved anime and manga ever since I was a child growing up in the 80s in far-flung parts of the world. Dragonball, Gundam, Doraemon, Saint Seiya, Fist of the North Star - these were all things that were part of our childhood in the Far East. A pivotal moment for me was when I read a manga about robot models called Plamo Kyoshiro, and started buying some of these models to build myself. Nearly 30 years later, I started Japan:Cool, selling these really cool Gundam model kits that I loved as a child. The rest, as they say, is history!

Anime and manga has grown into a massive market in the UK, but we are still very limited in what products we can get over here. There's little to no interest from mainstream shops, and almost nowhere where you can go to browse and view a range of merchandise at reasonable prices. The things you typically find in the UK are small, easily transportable things like keyrings, trading figures, caps, wallets and so on. The UK market is also rife with counterfeits and knock-offs, which are much lower quality and can sometimes be dangerous.

This is where we need your help. Although we stock a good range of Gundam products, we can't stock everything we would like, and there are so many more things we'd like to make available to you. Toys, plushies, props, figuresm character goods, Gashapon - if you've ever been into a shop in Akihabara in Tokyo, you'll know what I mean!

And only by shipping goods in large quantities by sea would we be able to bring prices down closer to what you'd pay in Japan.

That's our dream - to make Japanese pop-culture as accessible to fans in the UK as it is in other countries in the world. For too long, UK fans have been at the mercy of expensive shipping costs and lack of support from wholesalers and anime companies. Please help us to change that!